cosmic aperture,
let me look, let me
explore, friend.

countless open eyes
like wild flowers
in the vibrant Spring,
each pair festooned with ruin.

On the balcony,
It's pseudo-social housing,
Nothing fancy.
So I'm on the balcony,
And there's this beetle, this little beetle
And it's either high with me
Or dying with me
Just kinda flying into the ground and sorta sliding around on its head
On the still sunlit concrete.
It stops. On its back, legs flailing in the
nothingness. It rights itself.
It's sat still (well, not really sitting; it's a beetle.
but I imagine it would want to be sitting. I'm sitting).
There's a lightning bolt urge to crush its tiny carapace,
Just as quickly dashed away.
I take my last drag.
We watch the setting sun a while.
Spring is beginning to warm.
I leave the beetle to its business and go inside.
Escapes won't save me;
How terrified I am.

Last night there was a spider
Floating down from the bathroom ceiling
Tethered by an invisible silk thread
On a backdrop of powerful yellow made dingy by the incandescent light.
It was so graceful.
It looked like it was falling in slow motion.
I went to the kitchen and got a plastic cup, and came back to the spider,
Scooped it out of the air carefully, catching the thread,
Went to the living room and threw it out the balcony door,
onto the then dark concrete
(I didn't see if the beetle was still there, I didn't think to look,
I didn't care, but I assume not).
So today I was volunteering in a bookstore
(I remind myself of that old saying: charity is the pastime of those who don't care)
And as I came down the stairs
(upstairs is sorting, downstairs is selling)
There in front of me, evental,
my whole horizon, centred, unexpected:
A familiar form that had forcedly been forgotten
And an all too familiar sensation,
a chest-tightening-heart-drumming
terror
as if thunder thundered just behind my head,
Zeus piercing my heart,
His claim:
A woman who works in the coffee shop
Who a few months ago I asked out
(not the coffee shop, they don't pay their taxes)
Who has a boyfriend who would say he has her.
I think my disdain for chauvinism and possessional language
still arise from motivations chauvinistic and possessive;
I have not outgrown the oppressors in me.

La Rochefoucauld once put it: 'there are some people who would never have fallen in love
if they hadn't heard there was such a thing.'
I'm one of those people, or at least it was wanted.

We had only really spoken on that one occasion
(not me and La Rochefoucauld, he's dead; the barista)  
and briefly on that one other occasion
other than those service-consumer paradigmatic motions and incantations
In the practico-inerte, or beings-in-themselves, alienated, i don't know.
But really, it hurts to be reminded.
She hadn't yet seen me.
I had absolutely no idea what to do for a few seconds.
I say hi and timidly waddle toward her
And at first she doesn't seem to notice, but then is like, hey.
The awkwardness is peppered with short exchanges of information
And smiles that remind my soul it's alive.
I'll skip my failures in making conversation:
Turns out she draws. An artist. The knife twisting.
She's not into politics though
As if that somehow changes things.
I buy a pile of books. We leave the shop.
We're walking the same way a while.
I'm dying here but above the clouds.
She says it's nice that it's warm when she comes out of work now.
I say something weird about spring.
The laugh says it all. Baudelaire said it all:
when you walk, you dance, when you speak, you sing.
(he's dead too)
I asked if there is a lost and found at the coffee shop: there is:
I intend to retrieve a gross lame letter I wrote her
that one time I broke the symbolic order,
to my shame and undisclosed superego humiliation
(an all too familiar sensation).
Am I in the age of guilt? Was I transubstantiatiated? And hell? Pardon the details too many and too few.
The short walk had filled me with such energy
to prevent me being sad when we parted.
Back on the balcony, in another sinking sunlight
The spider scurries out of sight,
And I can see a glimmering web built onto the vertical bars.

creeping in the night:
the clouds
across the moon.

crows gather
on the weeping tree.
wind departing gentle.

oh misfortune, how you are steady, dependable
and secretly comforting
(to the one who has suffered too much).
oh good fortune, how you arrive
at the most inopportune and awkward of times.
(but, of course, this isn't true of all places and lies.)

days of wanting
days of having
days of losing

days of wanting again
days of having but not the same
days of losing what never was

days of wanting what cannot be had
days of having what will always be lost
days of losing whatever remains

waiting praying begging

for the days
           to come a little less
                                    predictably


          ­                                                             sudd­enly—
                                                           ­               out of nowhere


days without want for anything i am not already
days unconcerned with having anything i am not already
days of laughter and dancing and friendship without end

and i
for all my foresight
never saw any of it coming

dark consuming thoughts:
cannibals
secreting themselves.
(out of the nothing, no longer,
that was the voice of truth.)

darkness,
such infinite darkness:
stargazing.

1
at the inauguration of
the 45th
president of the most
powerful country on earth: a
White Man Of The Good One True Lord says
that in The Bible, rain
is the sign of
a blessing from
God.

2
perhaps rain is a blessing from God, perhaps
she's trying to cause a flood.

3
2016 was the hottest year on record.
we're going to boil,
America First
(well, really it's the poorest
non-white people who will feel it first, who are
feeling it as we speak,
as some speak of it
as if it wasn't real, our impact).
climate change and LGBT rights have already been removed from the White House website.

4
we all have our part to play
in the suicide of the human race.
America First.

5
perhaps i'll see you in the nuclear bunker
or if we're brave, by the barricades,
either way,
come bridges or walls,
this concerns us all, and
be careful, many still see the
skin
that is
not white, as dirt, and
be careful, The Man is not afraid
to grab you by the ***** (men
set the standard of ****** assault, ****,
what is acceptable; patriarchy
and patriotism go hand in hand, they even
descend from the same root word,
'ruling father', 'fatherland'), and
care for one another, defend
those who could just as well be you
next.
we are all just bodies that feed the machine.
we are all in chains, robbed of time, we all
have a world to gain.
"because things are the way they are
things will not stay the way they are."

6
when will a "Native American" be president?
is it not their land?
imagine what the world would look like
if the founding pillars of
America
had been genocide and slavery...
(it would look like this.)
can you imagine a Muslim president?
there's every reason to believe
that Foreign Policy means
terrorism
in a foreign language.

7
"first as tragedy, then as farce."
******'s moustache.
some strange yellow thing
on an orange head.

8
God as The Father
was a metaphor
that was appropriate for a time
past.
did you hear the one about the
astronaut?
when they returned to earth,
peopled asked them,
When you ascended into heaven,
did you see God?
the astronaut said Yes.
the people asked desperately of
what God was like.
the astronaut said,
She Is Black.
there's also the one about the rock.
no matter how massive and solid it is,
if you and the rock are
both falling off a cliff,
clinging onto it won't
save you.
my god is an indisputable
feeling
that comes and goes,
sometimes impossible, nevertheless
necessary.

9
"where there is oppression, there is
resistance."
"it is right
to rebel."

10
though the enemy is abominable,
you need not despair.
nor do you need hope
to take action.
out of nowhere, by hazard and courage and angst,
an event can change everything.
"cast away illusions,
prepare for struggle."

11
God bless the (Dis-)United States of America.

quand sera la prochaine fois?
une lumière aveugle
montre mon chemin.

/

venu de ****
mes semblants, trouvant la misère
qu'ils se sont enfuis.
touche pas à mon pote!

the thrill and guilt
of transgression
unhinges my very being.

a foreclosing law is laid down
on the fierce skin of justice.
duty and danger calls.

and should the heavens truly fall,
if i'm caught, or probably even if not:
it will be an even greater struggle than ever before, living myself,
but that's not all, at the very least, that's not all.

the country isn't poor at all:
the wealth is just hoarded
and goes rotten, and skeletons of industry rust.
the cities are littered with bodies with suits and ties
stepping over them. dangerous speculation leaves behind another gutted home.
the country isn't poor at all:
the wealth is just hoarded
and goes rotten, and skeletons of industry rust.
in all of history, never has the world been richer, never
have individuals been richer, and communities never so barren.
the country isn't poor at all:
the wealth is just hoarded
and goes rotten.

children cry up from the depth of debt for bread and help and shelter
met either with the ideologue's injunction "AUSTERITY."
or deaf ears and tax-payers money
invested in guns and bombs sent abroad, and rhetoric behind the barbed fences of our shores, and the tools for plundering all the people and every corner and resource of the earth and the as yet still fluid future: the tools to cement our early doom.

all that is wretched is integral to the structure:
it is what the system stands on, everything it crushes,
squeezing out the life and stealing it;
we must come to understand this, and step back.
we'll have to face—or be forced to—collapse.

the country isn't poor at all:
the wealth is just hoarded
and people are forsaken, starved, blown up, drowned, deprived of voice and value;
profits are made. life comes at a price, too much for most.
the country isn't poor at all:
the wealth travelled north - taken - into open arms,
those brave, desperate souls in flight who followed
were handed - abandoned - to the waves or absolute destitution.
the country isn't poor at all:
the wealth is just hoarded—
"SAVE THE BANKS, SAVE THE COMPANIES, THEY'RE TOO BIG
TO SINK"—they're titanic—"THERE'S NO TIME TO BE DEMOCRATIC—IT'S A STATE OF EMERGENCY—THEY CANNOT FAIL."
the country isn't poor at all:
the wealth is just hoarded,
hundreds of thousands of houses are empty
and skeletons of industry rust.
the country isn't poor at all:
the wealth is just hoarded,
and so the world goes rotten.

justice will take more than just good deeds:
open the borders and break down the walls!
set no destinations at which to arrive, but towards horizons strive;
we need not firewood, but the seed:
make union and defiance your call!
open the borders and break down the walls!
produce and allocate according to need
and there shall be enough—for us all!

(and i might add: please,
forgive me my youth and naivety...
but i am no believer in the Fall.)

it brought them something like catharsis,
knowing it wasn't working.
"that's enough now," one said to the other.
that was enough, for one, at least, and the rest
is the future.

no one can bring me down
because i can't get any lower.
at the bottom,
i've found something.

i know where to go
to find skin that is a refuge
and not a prison;
but under the cold sun of isolation,
the flower of dread blooms in my heart:
i am petrified, immobile.
it is asked of me to cast it all away, to cast off from these shores
and return nevermore:
for from out at open sea is from where desire calls,
and so i must tear away from the fish-hook-eyes,
make sail, hands trembling, the clock of decision drawing a breath,
and declare that the winds take me out of the bay,
onto the fierce and serene waves, and that the night skies guide me:
to the horizon, mythic islands, sirens and rocks.
i must not give way, i must forge ahead, and solidify my art,
despite the flower of dread that ever blooms in pit of this fragile heart.
(for the skin that is a refuge, to make me robust,
for the treasure before the flotsam—under a new sun,
it's beyond, beyond more than enough. )

how deep does our love go?
perhaps down to the core
of the earth - molten
iron nourishing roots,
preventing this planet
from being a barren place
for now - at the very least.

and so i guess it's a question of whether the possibility
             of being close to each other
is worth enduring the actuality of the distance between us
             that we'll feel all the more sharply in the heart
for having already tasted the fruit of intimacy
             and found that all other delights are unsatisfying
for want of what was and what could yet be
              if it could yet be.

what would it take
to capture you, just for a moment?
were it as simple as a sacrifice,
my life might be in danger.

that smile inspires a desire,
a desire to inspire that smile of yours myself.

stumbling through the endless
snaking valley labyrinth of twisted letters,
lost, looking for you;
the shadows do not always inscribe fear—
what i fear is that you are
where i cannot reach.

greeting faces just to watch them go.
slipping away, the makings
of fragile eternity.
finding traces of you here, traces there:
i grasp them so close to my heart,
so tightly
that they are crushed.

the path between us
is made of words
and with every step i take,
i step on something jagged,
and i have so far to go
to a place i cannot even know is really out there.
(i go on, there's nowhere else
worth going.)

i threw myself into politics
then had to get home.
i ran to the train.
i'm sat. book open.
she's sat opposite,
also with a book.
how visions of the future blossom from aleatory situations!
what virtual constellations reveal themselves in these celestial scope revolutions of ideas!
how all the categories are shook!
some blokes are sat near in a four seater,
three of them i think, i dare not look. (why are they always in packs?)
they're complaining about the football game
i didn't know had been played in the city we're leaving,
and extolling how they've been drinking since this morning
(it's almost 8PM now)
and they're rather quite loud.
one of them says everyone is reading Harry Potter.
another says "******* is it Harry Potter."
"it's like a library in here." "i don't read."
they start to talk about ****** foreigners and ******* birds.
"that one behind you is alright, ey, ey."
they're talking about her.
i, all the while: an immigrant's son, a cowardly statue
whose basic elements had been rendered into fury.
i try to tell myself:
these are my working class brothers, my fellow sufferers,
a picture of people i'm fighting for...
it's even for people like them that mothers teach us how to love...
but inescapable is the instinct that they are a lost cause
and that liberating oppressors would be counter-productive.
seeing as i am being cynical:
i, for all my principles and sense of duty,
i who has not read one page since i sat,
my fantasies are just as possessive
even if they are dressed up in metaphysics;
a sordid, crumbling, self-corroding man through and through.
at least my family in the east and spain and greece and elsewhere is still beautiful.
we arrive at our stop. an empty freedom.
the blokes are first to get up. i try to be in time with her;
our eyes meet and she gives a smile i'll remember,
but i didn't really manage to return anything at all.
another lost future i began to fall for;
perhaps i lack the strength to prevent these premature autumns...
well, my silence in the field says it all.

i give chase with reckless abandon.
it's the thrill and the gamble.
it's the eyes that
pierce through and through
that tell me: "come closer,
this will destroy you."

envy sustains me,
envy of the flowers that bloom
in adversity.
such marvels, whereas i,
but a blade of grass, for now.

escaping the body
i live with
into fantasy
becomes just as tiring
and repetitive
and repetitive
as the days of flesh,
and produces only blank maps
and nebulous passion,
little ecstasy in comparison
and not even a trace of edifice.

eternally returning
metaphors, are you teachers
infinite, or symbols of limit?
(gods, demons, unending souls, the one whole, freedom, equality, justice, truth, love, isolation, emptiness, from nothingness, outside everything, space and time, the sublime)
monotonous waves
erode the boring cliffs
where we make our home;
in search of as yet
unspoken metaphors,
perhaps approaching
from beyond still unseen
superlunary horizons,
perhaps redolent of wonder
and radical adventure,
perhaps nothing but dreams,
or exclusively
for the contemplation
of smart machines,
and so we begin again.

barred
from the body of paradise,
i seek for knowledge.
experimenting, transgressing:
the ethical act—
fleeing:
all the while in search of brick-like concepts
and comrades to throw them with
and build with,
whether it be barricades for the many
or shelters for all.
we'll look back, and say that our salvation was in fact the Fall
or we shall not be:
praise be to Eve, teacher of freedom,
the courage to stand, be counted, and refuse,
and love too;
praise be to Eve, breaker of the neurotic's dream,
my Venus and pioneer of the mind.

every blessing
is the other side of a curse
but the same cannot be said
always of the reverse.
(though i may tell a lie of privileged lives.)

every inch of your flesh
is a seraphic encounter.
consecrate me.

so i woke up the next morning
and everything
had worked itself out overnight,
so a happy ending was in store after all:
a report from fantasy land.

‘Once fire is the form of the spectacle the problem
becomes how to set fire to fire.’
—Joshua Clover, ‘My Life in the New Millennium’

i’m back
back with a thunderclap.
no wait, scratch that.
back with a thunderous tone from the seldom seen soul
groaning lonely long sung melodies, if it please.
welcome to a kingdom of dreams
and agony.
a stone’s throw from here:
a face
Unseen.
and somewhere between(:) low
oceans rolling under the moon,
a storm approaching,
crazed wind whirling,
my sails unfurl, searching for the open seas of your gaze;
sick of being furtive;
i live and i yearn and i speak what i learn
and i know when i haven’t earned it,
too often too stern and i know you don’t deserve it,
i know everyone i know and too many more deserve so much more
and for them to have this i live and i yearn!
Justice!
for this i live and i yearn
on the turning earth that gives
no rest to the world weary
left alone
to burn out, i burn out, i burn out
i rise from the ashes
a phoenix grasping wheat and hammer in its talons,
seeking to pass out gifts and set fire
to fire itself, to sing Clover in the streets,
to render the helpless
helpless no longer.
i am (not) unbroken
like infinite waves.
friends fan the flames of my brazen heart
ablaze at three minutes to the midnight of my flagrant soul.
a toll on your life,
a tax on your poverty.
shouting: no more!
shouting: we will not settle for less than we are owed!
shouting: down with the dictatorship of the plutocrat!
shouting: down with the rich Man’s socialism!
shouting: …
in a fantasy, odiously
no more, doubt ridden,
not yet traversed nor even intraversed,
not yet reified, not quite versed;
apartheids’ unovercoming, voices atrophied,
walls rising higher, reception terse
and curse those bless’ed curses
transdescending themselves
in blessings through me!
they haven’t yet found me at my worst
so things couldn’t get worse if i hurt them.

my intentions a mess,
my effect bereft.

wake me from my slumber, let be the aching of my chest;
let the heaviness of my heart be the weight of solidarity;
let be! the political is personal to some, life and death to some:
that’s why i’m so glum, chum,
they’re killing quicker than i finish another straight ***…
****.
and on our own soil too – see, it’s partly not for oil;
blind to land grabs and assets stolen, our toil exploited – that’s what’s up.
can’t handle serfdom? physical, mental, or spiritual health problem?
abject subsistence and misread decisions not assuaged by some other ***?
unconditional basic income?—say what?
choose starvation, hypothermia, suicide, fear—
it’s a numbers game
and every loss is a ******,
it’s ****** up.
state cuts ****, zombie banks ****, transnationals ****, TTIP will ****,
our heroes are experienced
as torturous humiliators and mass murderers in other countries,
it’s ****** up.
and reactions to shock and awe, pollution, imperialism and stolen raw materials be the chorus.
and i hope the NSA and other such state ***** hear clearly what i have to say.
and always from the pools of blood,
money trickles up.
structurally omni-parasitic,
-cataclysmic, -containing
an unlucky lucky one formula;
“profits today, **** tomorrow!”;
a system of mass extinction and violence;
cultures of hate;
distain for compassion;
secret social cleansings;
privatised gain, nationalised pain;
a plaguing absence of understanding;
sanction fetishes;
rational genocides;
wages; ***; television; grumpy cat; death drive;
armies of invisible slaves and pillaged unpeoples,
and sordid crowds of visible ones in denial or denied;
and an honest and patronising pastiche poet!
to not even begin.

but a promise shall be a promise.

weeping won’t get it done.
i shall muster my forces even before four horsemen,
the long attricious charge toward a universal freedom from fear
and hierarchy shattered
under banners of equality axiomatic sworn.
my wingbeat shall be adorned with thunderous applause,
it shall disclose smokescreens and it shall cleanse you of opiates
and not just those you have in mind.
watch me soar, join these skies;
rise above the immoral laws and their warped economic concord;
be aware of where the wealth is hoarded;
don’t concern yourself with lies,
concern yourself with liars and who they’re lying for.
be wary where your desire’s from.
there’s still longer than a long way to go
but your sense of urgency is needed now.
the shadows of the Bomb and of ecological catastrophe now grow longer
than the shadow of death
in any old sad song in history
in scarcity, surrendering abundant potential for post-scarcity
to strings of the superego, demons, conductors, controllers
and orchestrated outrage!
and i know we have more to lose than our chains.
but the view from the night of Terror is of the far off tranquil stars
and the moon never brighter!
bind, unbind, entwine.
i will not leave behind only wasted time.
find yourself, find the source, give out your hand
to dance, to share, suffer, fall—
find the hand of another, there find recourse—
and consider the Call, and consider the Course.

just when things were starting to look up,
the whole sky
fell like a tonne of bricks.

and we were looking out forever in
opposite directions but there
was nothing behind what we
could see when we turned around.

and what else could tenderness be if not
revealing what you've kept
hidden even
from yourself?

defiance, maybe. resistance against a time
such as ours, for a time coming, if it's coming,
not so callous, our hearts, if they dared
at the edges of nowhere.

of your love nothing is known
but the event happened
therefore you exist.
indisputably.
between a name and
nothing at all.
if you insist, if you can.

you must resist

all the world's temptation to
yield
for the hazard of
something singular.
of your love nothing is known
as it is with all
processes of truth-becoming

traversing

eternity

and back again, in a flash.

there are signs out there.
almost nothing.
but if you follow them
they can lead you
to a world that will always
be more
than what you know.

simply
you set free in me
that which would live fully.

who am i to deny signs?
footprints in the snow,
a sign that someone has
walked this path in
the cold, alone, before i did.
everywhere scattered, these worldly signs.
who am i to deny signs?
this midnight blue on
Barnett Newman's canvas
is not blue, but a blueness embodied—
not some scattered object or
amorphous person, but the open, what it is
to see, the difference
between this instance and the beyond,
this sensuous encounter.
who am i to deny signs?
these eyes, that look at me and see
me seeing what it is to be
seen, not as footprints
in the snow, nor even a work
of art, as no thing among
other things, but outside, outside this
universe of interpretation,
signs that speak of
an entirely other world of
experience, perception, possibility, of
love
that i can never
really know, for all that,
but still it calls and
demands that i decide
if i'll risk what is precious to me for
what could be precious to me or
nothing in the least.
but who am i to deny signs?

i make my approach,
mimicking plaintive movements
of the colossus
cloud structures migrating
across serene vastness.
-----their blue plains
-----are my green plains;
-----their source
-----is my source.
i see a silhouette
wandering on far off hill:
i wonder...
the crows leave no trace in the air.
their cawing has caught my heart
like a hook would a fish.
the unrelenting wind at my back
will not have me turn back:
i am promised to the forest.
at the edge of the trees
is a grave, modestly
marked by a small wooden cross:
perhaps it is my grave.
i enter ungracefully
into a forgotten kingdom of grace
ravaged.
the earth, so full of life,
is carpeted with death:
brown leaves crunch beneath my boots.
the webs of ivy i traverse make me feel unwelcome.
elsewhere, on trees fallen
and others not yet so,
merciless ivy and giant vines constricting.
elsewhere, the singing of birds unseen
in beauty.
the whispers of trees are
earth shattering, soul cleaving:
freeing me from my confines concrete.
everything that does not seem still
trembles—
do i seem still?
the trunks of trees are robust like my being;
i look up, their high reaches sway playfully,
gently,
as sun rays gain entry also
and remind me of my duties
which i am gift to.
it's true, my dear Emerson:
perpetual youth is found in the woods,
but we mustn't tarry too long.

somewhere in between the outer reaches
of meaningless ***, and the inner tomb
you land in after the last spinning room
of several tequila shots too many

you will discover, your vast finitude
is not everything it’s cracked up to be
and the siren songs of your hidden sea
signal the wreckage of solicitude

but everything that sinks reaches a place
where up is clearly distinguished from down;
though light receded, and breath forgotten,

something ever unaltered, if but trace,
opens the way to return to the sound
of graceful footsteps, on paths untrodden.

most things are ****.
the spectacle goes on.
the last **** of the human species.
we're all doomed, but this has nothing
to do with you and me
now in this room, our bodies
and the heat between them.
let's get high and ****.

she said she was a Tory,
i took a risk and i kissed her...
tasted like bacon, all cold and dead,
and now
i'm in debt.

for so much longer,
i will live with my disdain
for a world
in which i must be forgiven
for being young and un-empowered.

terrified again
of speaking
of speaking but the words not coming
of speaking and the words coming but not reaching
of speaking and the words coming reaching but losing
all significance upon arrival
as if they had wings
but no feet to stand on
and so were always already destined
for crash landing—and lo,

what flights of folly.

was i seen and heard and perceived for what i really am?

unknown.
if anything is clear:
i must learn to listen harder
if i am ever even to dream of truly speaking:
this itself is what it is to think.

these things are most difficult of all:
(not to scorn, mock, or despair at human action, but) to understand
to be kind to yourself
to pledge your body to the Idea
to persist in being
                           kind to yourself.

all Ideas have been betrayed.
a philosopher says:
all the world will ever offer you is the temptation to surrender.
the ethical act is to resist
to transgress
the transcendentally
stupid
cruel
law of this world.

there will be risk, there will be laceration, and anguish
but no one moment
is unendurable.

mieux vaut un désastre qu'un désêtre.

and so what might become of us?

imagine the most beautiful being in all of existence
and you'll almost be there.

i know nothing of love
that is not an extension of the sun.

i have become light.

i know nothing
but fascination.

what chance
to have laughed and danced

and to go on.

our song will never end:
it will only be taken up
by other instruments.

i have become light.

all that is lost
returns in altered form:
disguised, transfigured.

we will be transfigured.

what you seek
is seeking you.

how certain i was the dark would find no end!—and lo,

i have become light.

stronger than time.

a site of communication, ecstatic love, art
in the eye of god.

a dancing star.

i have become light.

what chance!

—i and all the others that will love you
forever and forever and
forever—

what chance
to have laughed and danced

and to go on.

i find it, like a book finds its reader.
like the reader finds an old friend between the pages.
and the friend, their love returned in full.
and love, its givingness become relay.
and searching, its pilgrimage.

the traces
held so closely
they break.

all that was said
and left
unsaid.

the touch
of the beloved
a fading memory.

your smile
like the sea greeting the pink dawn that day
vanished into starless night.

and i, in truth
though torn open and emptied
still draw from the well
of gratitude, that endless sky
that you left in me.

a parting gift.

fragments of light.

tender mystery.

they wanted
they didn't know
how
if
if it matters
but what else
if not
if not

else if but not wanted
matters not how
not knowing knowing if
if what else unknowing
not wanted but else wanted
if wanted
but how wanted
if only how wanted

greeting faces just to watch them go.
slipping away, the makings
of fragile eternity.
finding traces of you here, traces there:
i grasp them so close to my heart,
so tightly
that they are crushed.

grieving the loss of things
i never had.
so much sun outside.

i sink into you
like a prehistoric beast in a tar pit.

another rotation around the massive burning ball of gas
that gave a random rock ball countless forms of life and
a history
like no other in all the known and unknown universe.
22. not much to show for it, but no time at all
in the geologic scheme of things.
we are born between two unimaginably hot bodies:
the immobile sphere of the sun
and the flowing magma below.
here we are between two inhospitable environments
blooming like flowers.
and between us and each body, another between:
a silent infinite void
and the shifting crust booming with eruptions at the edges.
all this indifference to life paramount to its existence.
i like to think i've learnt a thing or two, but
i could be wrong.
for instance i said the sun is immobile and that the void
is silent. but the sun is at the edges of a galaxy
orbiting its centre, and the galaxy itself is on course
to collide with andromeda
to form a new galaxy altogether,
and celestial bodies have their songs,
you can even hear the rings of saturn singing.
so i could be wrong, it is a tradition of our species.
indeed i think this was the first thing i ever really learned:
how wrong you are, how there will always be more
to this world than what you know.
the next thing i really learned:
you do not know what a body can do, you do not know
how good a body can feel, not yet, but you will.
something i was taught, in passing:
no one moment is unendurable if you abide in the now.
all that is unendurable comes from letting the mind scout ahead
and letting it bring back a report of what is to come, and like
an idiot, listening to that report and believing the mind knows
what it is talking about. the mind is an idiot. listen to the body,
here, with you, not going anywhere. build a wall around each day,
each hour, each second if you have to. do not look over it, ahead or
behind, do not count. abide.
and last, but not least, something i am just now beginning to learn:
god is not what you think, like, at all,
and that's okay.
i've heard it said that love is just a word,
but nothing is just anything.
there are more planets than stars
but most of them have never been and will never be
touched by light or life.
all these statements are not wholly unrelated, as with
all things.
a wise monk will tell you that children of fire
seek after fire
whatever that means.

here again
thinking of what could have been
and what will never be
again, never
—enough.